There are a number of packet stream-based chip-to-chip interconnect protocols in the network industry. Some protocols are defined on fixed bandwidth point-to-point connections between chips (e.g., of a network device, such as a router). However, if a network device includes a chip (e.g., a packet processing chip, such as a packet forwarding engine (PFE)) with a single interface, and more than one interface device (e.g., input/output cards (IOCs)) needs to communicate with the packet processing chip, an interposer device (e.g., that acts as a switch) may be provided between the packet processing chip and the interface devices. If the interface devices produce more bandwidth than the packet processing chip can handle, current protocols do not prevent the interface devices from oversubscribing the packet processing chip.